A number of competitive games can presently be played on-line, for example over the Internet. One example is a game call East End Arrows, a darts game. In 2001 it was estimated that 70 million on-line games were played through that site with each visitor to the site playing three games per visit over a period of about 30 minutes. These figures imply that about 63,000 darts players are participating in the on-line game each day.
One of the largest on-line gaming sites is backed by Microsoft Corp and is found at zone.msn.co.uk. This site has over 18 million registered users and is easy to access and navigate. It has a wide selection of games, many of which are free, and premium games for which a charge is made. The site includes a chat room and a friends messaging service encouraging a sense of on-line community. The site runs tournaments and competitions in conjunction with sponsors with relatively modest prizes. The tournaments are usually based as a knock-out system or a league table system. Neither system is ideal, especially to the casual player or beginner. In the knock-out system, the casual player will often be eliminated easily in the first round by a more skilful and committed player. In the league system, those committed players tend to dominate with a small number of players always winning the leagues. Neither of these scenarios are attractive to competition organisers who want to encourage as broader participation in the tournament as possible and so maximise their revenues. For that aim to be achieved, casual visitors to the site must feel comfortable taking part in games and feel that they have a realistic chance of winning.
Other on-line gaming sites include flipside.com, worldwinner.com and sportsmad.com. The latter has introduced a rule prohibiting individual players from claiming more than one top score prize per month in an attempt to overcome the domination problem. However, it is the structure of the gaming method that gives rise to the problem and this is not addressed.
As well as games web sites, there exist a number of quiz and competition sites. One example is iwin.com run by Uproar Inc. This is a games for prizes and Internet lottery site. Players win “icoins” and exchange them for prizes. It also provides links to free lotteries such as extremeloto.com.
Worldwinner.com allows players to compete for cash prizes against other players across a range of games such as chess and checkers. In many countries such tournament games are legal. The tournaments include limited entry competitions where there is a pre-set number of participants; progressive jackpot tournaments with an unlimited number of participants but which end at a set time; and head to head games where two players play directly against each other for a chosen entry fee.
Entry fees vary depending on the tournament but are usually between about $1 and $10 with prizes ranging from about $1.25 to $90.00. Players are automatically assessed and placed in skill categories with tournaments often being held for players of a single skill category. As with other tournament games, this site suffers from dominance by a small number of skilled players, with the organisers encouraging participants to practice harder or try playing at different times of day.
Other quiz game and competition sites include tombola.com, boxerjam.com and speedyclick.com.
There also exists a number of on-line lottery sites such as freelotto.com, monstermillions.com and extremelotto.com. These types of sites tend to be similar, requiring the player to choose six or so numbers and click on a submit button, or an advertisement to register their entry. Prizes range from about £1,000 to $10,000,000 with the odds of winning ranging from about 1 in 25 million (freelotto.com) to as much as 1 in 814 million (webmillion.com).
None of the existing gaming, tournament and lottery sites provide an experience in which the casual user can have a reasonable expectation of winning or performing well. Knock-out and league style tournaments tend to be dominated by key players and suffer from the further disadvantage that endless practice is required to reach a skill level where there is a reasonable chance of winning.
Tournament competitions suffer from the further disadvantage that competitors have to wait for the tournament to come around, which might be on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.